


siren (love me while your wrists are bound)

by JamlessGenius



Category: Lost in Translation (Webcomic)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Other, Ouch, Prose Poem, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29968617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamlessGenius/pseuds/JamlessGenius
Summary: there is no song to lull him or excuse to make. he knows exactly what he is doing.he is both the boat and the passenger, and he watches himself fall to pieces with a smile.sometimes he wonders if he’d do it all again.he thinks that if someone ever asked, he’d have said yes.
Relationships: Ahn Jaewon | Wyld & Kang Dongho | D.Min, Ahn Jaewon | Wyld & Kim Daehyun, Ahn Jaewon | Wyld & Lee Minsoo, Ahn Jaewon | Wyld/Kang Dongho | D.Min, Ahn Jaewon | Wyld/Kim Daehyun, Ahn Jaewon | Wyld/Lee Minsoo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	siren (love me while your wrists are bound)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeoulWings13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeoulWings13/gifts).



he loves them. he really, really loves them.

his love is not quite romantic. his love is not familial. his love is something desperate, longing. it hangs off of him and consumes his spirit until it’s his only dream and goal, to obtain a love that he cannot touch. 

and for that he loves them all the same. for that he loves them even more.

he loves them in only the way a man in a cave can love the light that he cannot see. the colors that cannot exist in the shadows he'd forever known.

he’s an icarus to an apollo, a sailor to a siren.

they showed him beauty and light and friendship the likes of which he’s never truly seen before. and jaewon took the leap-

over his past

over his fears

over his dreams

they are the one thing he’s never had and the one thing he will never be able to have. and for all that having someone is, they have him and will never truly know it either. 

jaewon knows that none of this was ever on purpose. in fact, mr. park had offered it as a choice. it was a hand extended, offering to guide him down the plank. and jaewon grabbed it. 

jaewon has long since been erased to the world. wyld rules his body like a parasitic creature and he’s just the shell it wears. he’s dimly aware that it should horrify him. but he is a moth, flying into a flame that will burn him until there is nothing left to consume. 

forced optimism holds him steady the way it always has. if he smiles at his reflection in the mirror enough maybe he’ll believe it. he pretends that everything that hurts can be buried.

the ghosts of his past mistakes shackle him to his feelings of guilt. jaewon has to hide everything and he will always, _always_ hide what hurts others. 

he _knows_ wyld hurts them. it makes minsoo feel like a failure and dongho feel like he’d never escaped. it makes daehyun hold his tongue when he wants to scream. and jaewon knows that everything he does for them hurts them. 

knowing that wyld is nothing but a name for a parasite that has hollowed him out and left nothing but his love for them would hurt them more. knowing that what they’d perceive as being trapped as their own failures- jaewon has since learned their demons and it has strengthened his resolve to go down in silence because they can _never_ know.

sometimes, like a prisoner allowed to see the sun, jaewon is allowed to just be jaewon and pretend that wyld doesn’t haunt him. in those moments, he’s more aware of the fences of the prison yard than he is the walls of his cell. because the real jaewon is so shrouded in wyld’s existence that he might as well be a myth. things work out in odd ways. 

he wonders if he’s just staring off into a past he cannot access in those moments. if he’s just trying to relive something that he will never truly have, that he probably never had.

jaewon is doomed. he knows what is to come. he knows what will happen to him. 

he’s the wick to their flames, destroyed and crumbling to dust so they can burn ever brighter. and he’ll still feel guilty for clinging to that star and dragging their light to the earth when they could have been painting pictures in the sky.

he knows he is trapped. he will drown and be fed on, consumed for everything he produces, a cycle until they tire of him and toss him aside, limp and ruined forever. 

he can use any metaphor he wants to say what he knows, he is going to sacrifice himself in the end to build them no matter how much he pretends and feigns optimism. 

why does jaewon put himself into positions where he can never escape and then find reasons to stay?

he’ll have to endure, steering his ship into the rocks. and jaewon will endure, because his reason to stay is the reason he fell into the water in the first place. 

he will crash so the unwitting sirens can feed. he will drown so the unknowing can breathe. 

and the truth is, someone could call him selfless for this, for working to lose himself for them. but jaewon is a million kinds of selfish for this and that ties his hands to the wheel, forcing him to steer ever forward. the end is visible, even if he’s not sure how far away it is. but the end had been visible from the start.

he wonders if he’ll be destroyed on impact or if he’ll be chained to those rocks to be destroyed over and over. 

jaewon is a man who cares about a lot of things, but this is something he certainly does not. he used to, what feels like a million kilometers back and a million years before. back when his future did not have a determined course and he might have been able to run away.

every self-preserving instinct is to run, to hide, to disappear and never let himself be drawn into a web. and love demands he not only walk into it but bind himself in it tightly. and his own devotion terrifies him.

jaewon will admit that he oft picks the rash choice that is considered heart over head. but when it comes to this, he is not sure which instinct belongs to which. so he marches forever on, a lamb headed to slaughter and running to get there. 

there is no song to lull him or excuse to make. he knows exactly what he is doing. 

he is both the boat and the passenger, and he watches himself fall to pieces with a smile.

sometimes he wonders if he’d do it all again. 

he thinks that if someone ever asked, he’d have said yes.


End file.
